Apple iPhone 14 Plus review

Max-sized Super Retina XDR OLED Display

The iPhone 14 Plus model introduces a 6.7-inch Super Retina XDR OLED, same size as the 14 Pro Max, and with a similar resolution, too - 2,778 x 1,284 pixels or 458ppi.

It has the old large notch instead of the Dynamic Island and is protected with a Ceramic Shield as all recent iPhones.

The panel supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision, wide-color gamut, True Tone, and it is advertised to have 800nits of maximum brightness and 1200nits of peak brightness. The only downside, just like with the iPhone 14, is the fixed refresh rate at 60Hz.

We've completed our display test, and the new panel has lived up to Apple's claim - we've captured 797nits of maximum brightness. That's on par with the iPhone 14 and close to the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

But unlike the Pro models, the 14 and 14 Plus do not offer a sunlight boost, and their maximum outdoor brightness remains 800 nits. While this is still bright enough for good legibility, it's nowhere near the great performance the Pro models can offer.

In terms of color accuracy, the iPhone 14 Plus targets the sRGB color space in most apps, including the one we use for testing purposes. And just like all other iPhones panels, this one has a great color calibration. It remains color accurate even at the lowest possible brightness of just 1.2 nits!

The iPhone 14 Plus display is certified for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision support. The iPhone has all of the necessary DRM certifications, as you would expect, allowing third-party services like Netflix or YouTube to offer HDR streams.

There is one more thing worth mentioning - Apple does its HDR video playback in a very flexible way since it's not necessary for the content to be displayed full-screen for HDR to work. It can just work on the portion of the display that has the video playing, which is a bit of a surreal experience the first time you encounter it.

Battery life

The iPhone 14 Plus has one of the largest batteries Apple has put in an iPhone so far - it has a capacity of 4,323mAh, the same as the one inside the 14 Pro Max. And while Apple has advertised this Plus model as the best for battery life, the one on the Pro max is, in fact, listed across the official specs pages as longer lasting, probably due to the more energy-efficient display on the Pro Max.

We've completed our battery life test, and the results are rather impressive for an iPhone, that is. The Plus model scored 102 hours of total endurance. It easily aced the onscreen tests - it lasted 16 hours on web browsing and north of 19 hours on full-screen video playback. The talk time was nearly 24 hours.

The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

The endurance rating could have been better, but just like other iPhones, this 14 Plus model is an average performer when it comes to standby (matching the standby of the iPhone 14 Pro Max of 270 hours). It scored less on the onscreen tests when compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max with an identical battery, where the energy-efficient ProMotion panel gave it some boost.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode whenever possible. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage - check out our all-time battery test results chart.

Charging speed

The Apple iPhone 14 Plus comes without a bundled charger. The phone supports USB-PD 2.0 fast charging with a maximum power of 20W. Any 20W+ USB-PD charger should do the trick for the iPhone, but we've paired it with the Apple's original 20W power adapter for this test.

Apple is advertising all iPhones, no matter their battery capacity, to recharge about 50% in 30 minutes with its 20W adapter. And the iPhone 14 Plus is no different.

When connected to Apple's 20W charger, the iPhone 14 Plus battery went from 0% to 47% in half an hour. That is in line with the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  100%
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  73%
• Samsung Galaxy S22+ (45W)
  64%
• Samsung Galaxy S22+ (25W)
  62%
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  60%
• Apple iPhone 14
  60%
• Asus Zenfone 9
  57%
• Apple iPhone 13
  54%
• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  50%
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  48%
• Nothing phone (1)
  48%
• Apple iPhone 14 Plus
  47%
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  42%
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max (MagSafe)
  25%

A full hour on that charger gave us 80% of charge, and an hour and a half - 95%.

And, typically for Apple, the last 5% took another 30 minutes to refill, making the full charge time 2 hours. We should note that this test was carried out without Optimized Charging, which usually prolongs the charging process.

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Xiaomi 12T Pro
  0:23h
• Xiaomi 12S Ultra
  0:50h
• Samsung Galaxy S22+ (45W)
  1:01h
• Samsung Galaxy S22+ (25W)
  1:02h
• Asus Zenfone 9
  1:15h
• Apple iPhone 14
  1:31h
• Nothing phone (1)
  1:31h
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  1:41h
• Apple iPhone 13
  1:46h
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  1:46h
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  1:52h
• Apple iPhone 14 Plus
  2:00h
• Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max
  2:00h
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max (MagSafe)
  2:20h

The iPhone 14 Plus supports wireless charging up to 7.5W with Qi-compliant charging pads, though the latest iPhone listing at the WPC (the governing body for wireless charging) is for the iPhone SE (2022) - there are no entries there for numbered iPhone models after the 11. Coincidentally, starting with the 12th generation and including this 14 Plus model, iPhones have MagSafe wireless charging. They can take up to 15W from the magnetically attaching puck that you can buy separately for $39/€49 (you'd still need an adapter to power it, though, and it needs to be powerful enough).

From the software side of things, there's the Optimised Battery Charging toggle in settings, which allows the iPhone to adapt its charging curves to your charging patterns (mostly related to overnight charging and your sleep routine), so it minimizes the time the battery spends at 100%. It will charge quickly (well, iPhone-quickly) up to 80% and will then only finish things off just before it thinks you're going to need the phone.

Speakers

The iPhone 14 Plus features a hybrid stereo speaker system that's available across many iPhone models - there is a dedicated speaker at the bottom and an earpiece that acts as a second speaker. The top speaker is quite loud; it's almost as loud as the bottom one, with its sound quality being in the ballpark, too. This makes for an outstanding balance.

The top speaker serves as the right channel when playing music in portrait orientation, while in landscape orientation, the output is adjusted to match the phone's orientation. In any case, each speaker will still output some of the 'opposite' channel, but at a much lower volume.

The iPhone 14 Plus scored a 'Very Good' mark for loudness, just like the 14 Pro Max. And it offers identical audio quality, too - an excellent output with clean vocals, bass that you can hear, and rich treble.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.